The Influence of Endogenous Nutrition Knowledge on Consumer Food Purchasing Behavior

The relationship between nutrition knowledge and consumers' food behavior has been debated for years. Given mixed evidence in the literature, this study intends to further the understanding of the impacts of nutrition knowledge on food consumption by assessing the influence of nutrition knowledge on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) using a nutritionally differentiated beef product as a vehicle. The data used in the analysis were collected through in‐store non‐hypothetical auction experiments in supermarkets in Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky during September and October of 2008. The assessment at the point of purchase and the auction mechanism implemented in the experiments ensure less bias as compared to hypothetical survey studies. This study features an advanced econometric model and explicitly tackles the endogeneity estimation bias which is a common issue that is ignored and under‐addressed in the statistical analysis in existing studies. In an instrumental variable (IV) framework, our results suggest the existence of the endogeneity of nutrition knowledge and demonstrate the downward bias in the estimates, which may help explain the controversies in the literature. Furthermore, the estimates obtained from different estimation strategies used in the study implied the robustness of our findings about the significant impacts of nutrition knowledge on consumers' food behavior.